Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1887-05-14

Oppressive Laws of Labor Organization.

Oppressive Laws of Labor Organizations.
We hear loud complaint on the part of
the working people against capital; the
burdens and onerous eXactions of capital,
etc. 1t is not our wish to apologize for
error or extenuate evil on the part of cap
ital. We prefer to concede it. But our
subject is to the workers, the toilers, the
bread-winnerS, as thew are called-and
pray tell us who is free from toll? We
want to talk with our fellow men seriously
and frankly and honestly. We have COM
plants to make against you.
When the trades unions passed laws that
only limited number of boys should be
allowed to learn trades, you begrudged
those boys right to inhabit the earth. The
Legislature should have stamped out this
conspiracy, and no doubt would have done
SO, but they dreaded their own popularity
In other words, they preferred personal
emolument to even-handed equity Do
you urge this is the result of free suffrage
No; 1t is the out-cropping of gross and
barbarous seltishneSs. Public acclaim can
rectify the error, and do it, too, in one day,
and withal can accomplish it without
bloodshed, which could not be done in an
imperial government. The republic is the
best government; we have no desire for a
strong government.
We are clamorous for a healthy public
opinion, for public opinion in our land is
law; because it eventually makes law
Then what are we to do with the boys
We may not drown them they must live
This regulation is a upas tree, and we ask
public opinion to uprootit. Common veal
prompts its overthrow. Time and expedi-
ency must abolish it.
Another great evil is now doing untold
mischief All men must have equal pay.
The difference betwixt gold and copper is
not greater than the disparity between two
men endowed by their Creator with talents
that distinguished them apart 1t is not
legal to pass a two-cent copper coin for a
quarter eagle; neither should it be thought
just to pay bungler the same wages as
an expert or first-class mechanic. BY this
law or regulation you do away with the
incentive to become proficient in the me-
chanic arts. You offer a premium on
botched work; you say to the apprentice
learning his trade, you need not trouble
yourself to be an expert or first-class Jour
| neyman; your pay will be the same
whether you are first-class or fourth rate
| hand at your trade.
Another folly is shortening hours and
advancing pay. You thereby diminish the
growing wealth of the world, raise the cost
price of whatever you consume, and in pro-
portion as you enhance values you depre-
ciate the buying power of money.
! One more monstrosity we would speak
! of. Working for pay or accepting wages,
and doing the least possible work you can
for the sake of nursing the job" This is
no more nor less than highway robbery.
Call it what you will, it is the outlawed
! footpad legalized.
| We need not say anything about the
anarchist. He is not properly interviewer
with our subject The utopian theories
advanced by this class are so extremely
| absurd that they must confute themselves.
But there is one more gross evil in this
classified list of oppression that we must
not fail to speak of.
The contagion of strikes. Striking in
New York because some other set of labor
ers have or imagine they have grievances a
| thousand miles away. Falling out with
employers without cause, because some
others may have grievances in some dis
tant part of the nation. This cannot find
extenuation in reason and must prove q
boomerang to those adopting it as a terror
| and q menace Capital will not attempt
enterprise when the contracting parties
hold a treacherous mental reservation and
only await a disastrous opportunity to
demonstrate it. The result is a business
paralysis, you bring the house down on
your own heads, and You must perish in
your own malevolent Vaccinations
To court disaster to exhibit your own
spleen, is evidence of hatred for mankind,
which will certainly ruin the perpetrator as
well as those who are crippled by your plot
to put things into chaos, that you may ex-
ult in the ruin which it produces This
must eliminate in revolution. If so, our
liberties are gone. And the hopes of the
poor are gone with it. For if order has to
be kept by an armed force, you who work
will have to do the fighting and also pay
the cost of the war. You will realize then
the full meaning of hard times. You will
be lucky if you get meat to eat once a
week. baltimore Herald